Winter

Not to be confused with Extension:Winter for adding new programming-like syntax to MediaWiki.

This page is obsolete. It is being retained for archival purposes. It may document extensions or features that are obsolete and/or no longer supported. Do not rely on the information here being up-to-date.

----- Winter was a prototyping framework for many small feature ideas. The main developer is no longer active.

This document describes MediaWiki's Winter interface design, along with changes and rationale compared to the interface design of the Vector MediaWiki skin and extension, which became the default skin for MediaWiki in 2010.

An interactive prototype (with limited functionality) has been built. You may play with it here. Screenshots to come.

Winter attempts to solve several problems inherent with the Vector skin/interface. In addition, it serves to inject a modern look and feel and serve as a showcase and prototype bed for new features and design changes.

By bringing forward functions and features we already have, like editing, discussion, history, contributors, additional means of contributions and collaboration, we'll open the site to many people who didn't know they had the ability or design to participate and contribute

With Winter version 0.6, the Winter prototype has been radically refactored and developed as a rapid-prototyping framework. The Winter framework is entirely JavaScript and CSS (with images, obviously).

This framework allows anyone with reasonable familiarity in JavaScript and CSS to write their own modules (called "snowflakes") that can be injected into the framework at runtime. Snowflakes can be simple (like one that changes the visual appearance of the page footer) to complex (like one that creates a "right rail" of surfaced activity).

Snowflakes can be developed and maintained independent of the main Winter framework (though they may have version requirements).

The source code for the Winter framework is available. Both the main "winter" depot and the secondary "snowflakes" depot are required: